Bob Wilber: The Making of a Jazz Musician

September 20 - December 17, 2010

The exhibition, held in the Milne Special Collection in Dimond Library, chronicled jazz clarinetist and soprano saxophone virtuoso Bob Wilber’s career, a journey that has continued unabated for over sixty-five years. Images for the exhibit were drawn from the Bob Wilber Collection, which Wilber and his wife, JoAnne (Pug) Horton, donated to the New Hampshire Library of Traditional Jazz, Milne Special Collections & Archives, in 2009.

Wilber is not only a jazz master on reed instruments, but he is a noted composer and arranger, and an ardent devotee of jazz repertory. The exhibit covered his early immersion as a teenager into the jazz scenes of Boston and New York, his unique connection to the legendary Sidney Bechet, the further maturation of his style with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band and Soprano Summit, and his role in making jazz repertory an integral part of jazz education around the world.

Bob Wilber returned to the University of New Hampshire and its Traditional Jazz Series on September 20, 2010. He was the headliner for the 200th concert in the long-running series.